Returning to Lubbock for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic took over, Whiskey Myers tried their absolute hardest to burn the Buddy Holly Hall down over the course of their two-hour set.
One of my classes this semester is News Writing and in that class, I’ve been told many many times that one of the key components of being a good journalist is to remain transparent so I’m going to do that right now. This is going to be a very biased recap. For starters, I have been trying to see Whiskey Myers every time they’ve come to town for the past 7 or 8 years. I am a huge fan of the band, I think Firewater and Mud are two of the best albums to come out of the Texas Country/Rock scene in the past 10 years. And, in that time, I’ve also watched them ascend to higher heights as far as their popularity goes. They’ve gone from playing tiny bars and clubs to now selling out almost their entire tour this spring and even opening for The Rolling Stones in 2019. So, needless to say, I was very excited to finally get to see the band, especially with the seat I had. However, before I talk about any of the performances, I have to gush over the theater because it was absolutely stunning.
My ticket for this show was $40 before taxes and fees and I am not lying when I say this, I will pay $40 just to walk inside this theater again. It was just such an awesome place to take in and if there is another show booked here that I don’t think I can miss, I will definitely be returning.
Drake White and The Big Fire kicked the show off at 8 p.m. and he worked way better as an opener than I thought he would. I’ve enjoyed White’s music for a little while but I was never head over heels for him. This opening set changed that. On stage, White was passionate, super talkative, and loved throwing in little introductions before songs that would get a laugh out of me before he kicked into them. One I remember specifically was before the song Raised Right where White said, “This is a song about how I was raised by a mom who would carry a Bible in one hand and a switch in the other, it’s called Raised Right!”
White also took time to talk about an incident that occurred to him a few years prior before the song Hurts the Healing. In January 2019, White was diagnosed with arteriovenous malformation, a rare condition that causes bleeding in the brain and spinal cord. White recovered, got better, and hit the road again. Then in August of that year, he suffered a stroke on stage and lost control of the entire left side of his body. After lots of therapy and treatment, White was finally able to walk again and control that side of his body. White said on stage that he wanted to start writing about his struggles in hopes of reaching someone also going through tough times. However, the pandemic was just starting to set in. He said his manager asked him, “Would you be interested in writing over Zoom?” to which White responded, “Dude I’ll write in morse code, smoke signals, I don’t care, I need to write.” His performance of the song was extremely emotional after the story and the set could’ve ended there and I would’ve been content. Then he threw in a cover of Alive by Pearl Jam which just made things better.
After a quick changeover, the lights dimmed and Whiskey Myers took the stage. What I’m about to say is something that I can’t prove as a fact but I’ve found it to be true over the years of going to concerts. I’ve been to a lot of shows across a lot of genres. I’ve seen rappers, giant pop stars, and lots of country shows. But there is nothing better than a straight-up rock show. Loud guitars, loud drums, lots of smoke, bright lights. Nothing has ever beaten that for me and Whiskey Myers scratched that itch for me, big time.
While the band usually gets lumped in as “country artists” because they’re from Texas and frontman Cody Cannon sings with some drawl in his voice, after this show, there is no doubt that they are a rock band and you won’t convince me otherwise. Songs like Bar, Guitar and a Honky Tonk Crowd, Gasoline, and Frogman are true southern rock anthems and they sound so great live. Not even just those songs either. The band, as a whole, sounds fantastic live. They’re super tight, they bounce off of each other well, and while Cody Cannon isn’t the most engaging frontman in the world, he doesn’t need to be either. He’ll just kick you in the teeth with his fantastic voice and some steady riffs.
The setlist for the show relied on their hits and a bunch of fan favorites. The encore was just hit after hit with the band saving some of their biggest songs for the end, most notably Ballad of a Southern Man and Stone. Their main set was full of highlights too with the band playing Broken Window Serenade early in the set to one of the loudest audience reactions of the night. Early Morning Shakes got an extended runtime for guitarists Cody Tate and John Jeffers to solo for a bit longer. And while I have never been crazy about the song Die Rockin’ (it’s just so cheesy), it was easily one of the best performances of the night from the band.
After the encore, Cannon came on stage solo, with an acoustic guitar, and played the song Reckoning which was incredible. For one man to be able to have an entire audience captivated with nothing more than an acoustic guitar and his voice was awesome to see. They ended the night with a cover of Refugee by Tom Petty which went over much better than I anticipated it would. You could’ve told me this was one of their own songs and I probably would’ve believed you. It’s not that they completely changed the song to make it their own, they just added their own little flair to it.
It’s safe to say that seeing the band live was very much worth the wait and with a Corpus date in the books for late July, I can’t wait to hopefully see them again. I do, however, have one major complaint that bugged me the entire show. I know in the grand scheme of things, it’s not my place to really tell people what to do or how to act at concerts but the number of people that were sitting throughout the show was pretty astonishing honestly. I would understand this many people sitting if I was at a Bob Dylan or Norah Jones show but Whiskey Myers? A rock band? I don’t understand it now and I probably never will. I do, however, have to share this video I took during the last song:
To circle back, I can’t recommend seeing Whiskey Myers live enough. If they’re ever in your area, you can’t go wrong with a nice little rock show.
Whiskey Myers Setlist:
John Wayne
Gasoline
Bury My Bones
Die Rockin’
Early Morning Shakes
Broken Window Serenade
Glitter Ain’t Gold
Frogman
Virginia
How Far
Bar, Guitar, and a Honky Tonk Crowd
Deep Down in the South
Encore:
Reckoning
Ballad of a Southern Man
Home
Bitch
Stone
Refugee (Tom Petty Cover)
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